Nylon, any synthetic plastic material composed of polyamides of high molecular weight and usually, but not always, manufactured as a fibre. Nylons were developed in the 1930s by a research team headed by an American chemist, Wallace H. Carothers, working for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. The successful production of a useful fibre by chemical synthesis from compounds readily available from air, water, and coal or petroleum stimulated expansion of research on polymers, leading to a rapidly proliferating family of synthetics.

Learn about some of the synthetic materials—nylon, Dacron, Mylar, Kevlar—from which …

Nylon can be drawn, cast, or extruded through spinnerets from a melt or solution to form fibres, filaments, bristles, or sheets to be manufactured into yarn, fabric, and cordage; and it can be formed into molded products. It has high resistance to wear, heat, and chemicals.

When cold-drawn, it is tough, elastic, and strong. Most generally known in the form of fine and coarse filaments in such articles as hosiery, parachutes, and bristles, nylon is also used in the molding trade, particularly in injection molding, where its toughness and ability to flow around complicated inserts are prime advantages.

Polyamides may be made from a dicarboxylic acid and a diamine or from an amino acid that is able to undergo self-condensation, or its lactam, characterized by the functional group −CONH− in a ring, such as ε-caprolactam. By varying the acid and the amine, it is possible to make products that are hard and tough or soft and rubbery. Whether made as filaments or as moldings, polyamides are characterized by a high degree of crystallinity, particularly those derived from primary amines. Under tension, orientation of molecules continues until the specimen is drawn to about four times its initial length, a property of particular importance in filaments.

Two of the ingredients that are used to synthesize the most common nylon, adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine, each contain six carbon atoms, and the product has been named nylon-6,6. When caprolactam is the starting material, nylon-6 is obtained, so named because it has six carbon atoms in the basic unit.

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...were used in this way. But later research, exploiting the polymerization techniques being used in solid plastics, culminated in the production of nylon just before the outbreak of World War II. Nylon consists of long chains of carbon-based molecules, giving fibres of unprecedented strength and flexibility. It is formed by melting the component materials and extruding them; the strength of...

...quickly and less expensively. Although traditional natural fabrics remained popular, they were almost completely replaced by synthetics in the manufacture of some garments. Women’s stockings made of nylon, for example, first went on sale about 1940 and, after World War II, soon supplanted all other types. Similarly, the underwear industry was revolutionized when latex thread was employed to...

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In 1928 a team of researchers, led by organic chemist Wallace H. Carothers of the United States and sponsored by the chemical firm E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, Inc., set out to discover what sorts of materials they could produce from varying combinations of long-chain molecules. In a pioneering process called polymerization they combined atoms into long molecules that varied in the types of atoms used and the ways they were joined, producing an assortment of unique materials. Then one day in 1930 they discovered an unusual property of one of their molten substances: it would stick to a glass rod and form a fine strand. As soon as the strand met the cold air, it solidified and formed a long continuous fiber that was both flexible and strong. If the fiber was then stretched to four or five times its original length, its properties changed further: it strengthened still more and at the same time became lustrous. Its structure was such that it could be spun into a fiber resembling silk, but it had high strength and elasticity and exceptional resistance to abrasion, rot, mildew, and chemicals. For eight years, chemists, physicists, engineers, and textile experts labored to develop this oddity into a usable fiber that could be manufactured on a large scale. In 1938 they announced their success. This synthetic textile fiber was to be called nylon.